Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs.

Stems: Stems branched(?), rounded to angular, pubescent with multicellular hairs or glabrate.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, borne on upper 4–6 nodes. Those leaves of a pair unequal, symmetrical or nearly so, elliptic–ovate, 11.5–22 cm long, 3.6–6.6 cm wide. Apex long-acuminate. Base attenuate. Surfaces sparsely covered with white, hemispherical, subsessile glands, becoming glabrate; blades firm–chartaceous. Margins serrate. Petioles 2.5–8.5 cm long, base sometimes clasping the stem or perfoliate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers 1–7 in open to very open umbelliform cymes arising in the leaf axils, sparsely covered with subsessile glands to glabrate throughout, peduncles 8–22 mm long, pedicels 15–75 mm long, apparently sigmoid, peduncles with distinct or occasionally connate bracts, bracts linear, 5–17 mm long. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx 2–5(6)-lobed, nearly actinomorphic, 14–36 mm long, cleft to base, the lobes linear, somewhat unequal, sparsely covered with subsessile glands to glabrate, deciduous or persistent in fruit. Corolla usually bilabiate, white, usually fleshy, slightly curved, tube cylindrical, straight or curved, ca.22–24 mm long, ca. 3–5 mm in diameter, sparsely covered with subsessile glands, more densely so in bud, upper lip 2-lobed, lower lip 3-lobed, upper lobes suborbicular, ca. 2.5–5 mm long, ca. 4–6 mm wide, lower lobes broadly elliptic, ca. 5–8 mm long, ca. 4–6.5 mm wide, the lobes imbricate in bud. Stamens 5, inserted about halfway up corolla tube, the 2 upper Stamens fertile, others staminodial, +/– with abortive anthers; fertile anthers coherent positioned in throat of corolla tube, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or occasionally by apical pores. Ovary superior, covered with subsessile glands at apex, glabrous below, oblong–ovoid, 2-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, placentas 2, ± intruded, rarely joined in center and dividing ovary into 2 cells; ovules numerous, anatropous, apex rounded or with a stylar beak; style ca. 5–6 mm long, covered with subsessile glands; stigma capitate, 2-lobed, lobes usually elliptic.

Fruit: Fruit a fleshy or firm berry; white; narrowly ovoid; ca.2.3–2.5 cm long; often tipped by the persistent stylar beak. Seeds unknown.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: